5 reasons why getting older is awesome

NOTE: If you're over the age of 30, feel free to skip this one. It's going to be a lot of you saying "Well, no {bleep} Sherlock" and chuckling to yourself about how these damn kids wouldn't know a tough life if it bit them on the ass. I'll have a post about "how to get drunk like a Chicagoan" or something later this week. See you then.

I turn 28 in two days. It's a fairly uneventful birthday, but a lot has changed in a year. I was talking to a dude this weekend in his early 20s and he expressed a lot of anguish about life. Figured I'd distill the stuff I told him into a handy listicle for all you Thought Catalog-ass fools out there. Here are five reasons why getting older is awesome.

You create a routine. No one is saying that you have to spend every day doing things exactly the same (unless you're in the military), but establishing a routine is a good way to bring some stability into your wild-ass life. In case you were wondering, my routine goes something like: I wake up, I look at my phone. I drop it onto my face. Repeat every day until death.

Realizing that things aren't as bad as they seem. When I was a little kid, I was consistently creating these worst-case scenarios about situations in life. If I got a bad grade, then my mom would beat me down and I'd have to move to Papua New Guinea or something. If I asked a girl out, she would not only say "no" but would then hire the Ku Klux Klan to burn my house down. That calms down when you get older. Uncertainty is always going to be with you, but you get to choose what does/doesn't trigger it. I don't get bummed out when I get rejected anymore and while I'm sure they would relish the opportunity, I'm not worried about masked white men with poor educational backgrounds burning my garden apartment to the ground. Approach the situation you're in with a pragmatic view of things. You'll be fine.

Sex. Look, I'm going to keep this all the way honest. When you're younger, you aren't aware of how awesome sex can be because you're imitating things you've seen in terrible pornos or taking the crappy advice your friend gave you once, even though that fool wouldn't know how to please a woman if his wang had GPS. It gets better when you stop freaking out, communicate what you want and like, and have fun. Matter of fact, you can apply that last part to yor life outside of the bedroom and you'll be fine.

Letting go of stuff. Be it friends you don't have anything in common with, a crappy relationship with someone who doesn't make you feel loved or even leaving a job you hate to pursue a passion, letting go feels good. It occured to me about four months ago that I was investing a lot of time and effort into shoddy situations and that needed to change. Do likewise. The water's fine over here.

Freedom. There's a difference in how your percieve freedom when you're in your early 20s vs. your late 20s. When you're about 22, you lose your mind about simple stuff like being able to decorate your house any way you want and being able to spend your money without running it by a parent. When you get on the other side of 25, you realize the scope of your life. I can quit my job this afternoon, sell all my crap and move to Cincinnati if I wanted to. I could start cooking meth and buy a big shotgun. I could become a stripper who only dances to Kool Moe Dee songs. Anything is possible. Don't forget that. Ambition gets sidetracked with age. You still can do whatever the hell it is that you want to do and if it doesn't harm anyone else, you should. Remember, anyone who tries to stop you from being your best is a stone-cold butthole and doesn't deserve you.

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